Cool info about the turkey and Ben.
In play:
The Great Seal of the United States (GSOTUS?) was first used in 1782. It took six years, three committees, and the contributions of fourteen men before Congress finally accepted the GSOTUS design that year.
The Great Seal of the United States and the Seal of the President of the United States are chiefly different in the design of the constellation of clouds and stars above the bald eagle’s head; the design of the scroll bearing the national motto “E Pluribus Unum” (“Out of many, one”), just over the eagle’s head; the shape of the shield on the eagle’s breast; the presence of a circle of 50 stars, representing each of the states of the Union, around the President’s seal; and the dark blue circle on which the President’s seal is displayed.
Juvenile bald eagles do not have the white head. They have a brown head and body. Second year birds have a highly mottled brown and white body. Their bellies can be white.
It is at about 5½ years when they acquire the adult plumage.
Charles Thomson, former Secretary of the Continental Congress, designed the Great Seal of America on June 20th, 1782. For the front of the Great Seal, Thomson made an American bald eagle the centerpiece and placed the shield upon the eagle’s breast. Thomson envisioned an eagle “on the wing and rising.” In the eagle’s right talon is an olive branch. In its left, a tightly drawn bundle of 13 arrows. Thomson said these symbols represent “the power of peace and war.” In the eagle’s beak, he placed a scroll with the first committee’s motto: E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One). For the crest above the eagle’s head, Thomson used the radiant constellation of thirteen stars suggested by the second committee. He described the light rays as “breaking through a cloud.”
For the reverse side of the Great Seal, Thomson used Barton’s suggestion: an unfinished pyramid with the eye of Providence in its zenith, but added a triangle around the eye (like the first committee did). He also created two new mottoes: “Novus Ordo Seclorum” (A New Order of the Ages) and “Annuit Coeptis” (Providence has Favored Our Undertakings). After consulting with William Barton, the position of the eagle was changed to “displayed” (wings spread with tips up) and the chevrons on the shield were changed to the vertical stripes we see today.
Benjamin Franklin also submitted a design for the Great Seal. He chose the dramatic historical scene described in Exodus, where people confronted a tyrant in order to gain their freedom. After Thomson’s design was chosen, Franklin wrote to his daughter complaining that the eagle looked more like a turkey.
In a deliberative body using Robert’s Rules of Order, there are only two officers required at every meeting: a Chair and a Secretary.
The ‘Robert’ of Robert’s Rules of Order was U.S. Army officer Henry Martyn Robert. Robert published the book while living in San Francisco, where he found meetings of any kind to be extremely chaotic. The first edition of the book, published in 1876, was entitled Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies. He published four editions of the book before his death in 1923.
Robert’s Rules of Order is on it’s 12th edition and is officially abbreviated RONR for Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised.
Out of play: If you want to see a copy of the 4th edition mentioned above, you can find it at rulesonline.com but be aware it is NOT the current version.
The Dread Pirate Roberts is a fictional character in the novel The Princess Bride (1973) and its 1987 film adaptation. Roberts is not a single person but is an identity assumed by one person at a time who then passes it on to his next protégé when he is ready to retire. When the time comes, the current “Roberts” and his chosen successor sail into port and discharge the crew. They then hire a new crew, with the ex-Roberts staying aboard as first mate and referring to his successor as “Captain Roberts”. Once the crew grows accustomed to the new Roberts, the previous captain leaves to enjoy his retirement.
The Dread Pirate Roberts is not someone to be trifled with. 
Mr. Roberts was a 1955 movie starring Henry Fonda as the title character and James Cagney as the ship’s captain. Jack Lemmon won the Oscar for supporting role. It takes place in WWII. Roberts is stuck on a supply ship and desperately wants to be on a fighting boat, but the captain won’t endorse his transfer. A bittersweet comedy/drama.
Actors Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau starred together in ten films from 1966 to 1998. Two of their collaborations were sequels to their previous films: Grumpier Old Men (a sequel to Grumpy Old Men) and The Odd Couple II (a sequel to The Odd Couple).
Jack Lemmon first collaborated with Walter Matthau in Billy Wilder’s 1966 comedy The Fortune Cookie, filmed in Cleveland, Ohio. The studio had originally wanted a bigger name in the Matthau role, but he ended up winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as a shyster lawyer.
Lemmon died in 2001.
His gravestone reads: “JACK LEMMON in”
Henry Fonda was born in 1925, and so was Jack Lemmon. They both served in WWII with the Navy, Fonda as a Lieutenant JG in Air Combat Intelligence and Air Ops, and Lemmon as an Ensign in Comm. Henry Fonda died in 1982, and Jack Lemmon in 2001. Henry Fonda was cremated and his ashes were scattered, and Jack Lemmon was buried at Westwood Village in Los Angeles.
(Not in play: Fonda was actually born in 1905.)
Oh yes! DUH. 
Thanks for that correction!
Henry Fonda’s second wife, Frances Ford Seymour, was the mother of Jane and Peter Fonda. After their divorce she entered into an psychiatric asylum, and committed suicide not long after.
As noted, Frances Ford Seymour was the second of Henry Fonda’s five wives. His first marriage to Margaret Sullavan in 1931 ended in a divorce in 1933. He married Seymour in 1936, and that marriage lasted until 1949. In 1950, Fonda married his mistress Susan Blanchard. She was the step-daughter of Oscar Hammerstein. They adopted a girl named Amy Fishman, who had been born in 1953. The marriage to Blanchard ended in divorce in 1956, and the next year Fonda married an Italian baroness named Afdera Franchetti. They divorced in 1961, and in 1965 Fonda married Shirlee Mae Adams, and he stayed with her until his death in 1982.
Bridget Fonda is the daughter of Peter Fonda, and granddaughter of Henry Fonda. After appearing in her father’s movie Easy Rider as a child, she studied acting in college, and became a popular actor in the 1990s, starring in films such as Single White Female, Point of No Return, Jackie Brown, and Lake Placid.
Fonda retired from acting in 2002, and married musician and film composer Danny Elfman in 2003.
Robert Downey Jr. first movie was likewise in one of his father’s film. He played Puppy in RObert Downey Sr.'s film Pound.
The pound sign is £ in the UK and its dependencies and territories, and it is used for currency in some other countries like Wales and Sudan. In the US the pound sign is the hash tag #, and in Canada it can be either £ or #. The £ comes from the Roman L, for libra pondo, which is the basic unit of weight in the Roman Empire. It translates to pound by weight. Libra is Latin meaning scales or balance, and pondo means pound. Libra pondo was eventually shortened to just libra, which was then abbreviated to lb.